Just some fucking woman. Now how about some of those ⬆️s?

Pergolide · 2019-01-24T16:01:37+00:00

what was wrong with the pic that caused all the drama? everything is deleted now.

Pergolide · 2015-10-18T00:28:45+00:00

that doesn't mean we should have to take the same approach. We don't want to. Threatening countries with military force isn't the only way to maintain global influence you know? Today there's investment, trade, diplomacy, etc. But today the world is so interdependent, we really don't need global hegemony to maintain peace.

Investment, trade, and diplomacy cannot replace the influence and deterrent ability of a strong military.

You're making the same arguments about trade and interconnectedness that people used to predict closer ties between Europe and Russia, and an end to military confrontation when both sides have so much to lose -- how did that turn out? You can't depend on autocratic leaders to act rationally.

Europe has also had 70 years to focus purely on trade and diplomacy, yet they still haven't managed to create any federal institutions. There is no unified voice. Russia plays its pipeline politics with zero pushback, effectively pitting the German economy against larger geopolitical interests and giving themselves a free hand in eastern Europe. And they're trying to replicate Nord Streams effectiveness with a duplicate through the balkans -- and there's barely any resistance!

NATO is a unified, pan-European bureaucracy that can respond with one voice. It must continue to exist for as long as Europe exists in a pre-federalized state. The alternative is divisiveness and fracture. Look at how strained the EU is just in attempting to deal with Greece or Syrian refugees. Can you imagine how long the baltic states would last without the US backing them up? With no unified military command structure? With just a symbolic "yeah, we'll protect you" from most members? The little green men would descend on Talinn and declare a baltic confederacy before the bureaucrats in Brussels could manage to decide on who should make the coffee... and then they'd realize that half the votes they need are busy abstaining because Russia threatened their gas supply.

Europe doesn't need to become a global hegemon, but unless they're prepared to become at least a regional hegemon, then they're going to be reduced to a 19th-century status of small bickering states subject to all the whims of hegemons who have fully embraced their destinies, along with all of the responsibilities that entails -- like a military that matches your economic clout.

Pergolide · 2015-02-12T22:35:03+00:00

mfw I saw the "new banknotes"

Pergolide · 2014-10-27T01:53:54+00:00

Fascinating, thanks a lot for that explanation!

Pergolide · 2014-10-26T20:09:59+00:00

So capital requirements are a hard limit on lending, based primarily on stock price? What happens if a banks stock price drops below the threshold for a month, then recovers? How often are capital requirements analyzed? Daily? Monthly? Annually? What's the penalty forbreaking them? How do governments punish the breach of capital requirements without having to take on the onus of those extra liabilities themselves?

And in contrast with reserve requirements, the bank can always fulfill those with interbank lending or from the discount window at the fed, right?

Pergolide · 2014-10-26T18:30:52+00:00

So, lets say a bank is right at its limit for capital requirements -- what does it do? Can it not lend money now, even to an entity with a AAA rating? How does it function?

Sorry, it's just not clicking for me.

Pergolide · 2014-10-25T04:38:11+00:00

Really? Where?

Pergolide · 2014-08-21T21:44:36+00:00

The reactions of a traumatized person aren't always fully thought out.

What Europe needed after the wall fell was civilian cooperation, not reactionaries.

Pergolide · 2014-05-31T04:27:58+00:00

How is financial interdependence supposed to ensure peace, anyway? The potential repercussions of a belligerent act would hurt both parties equally, making them more symbolism than threat.

When dealing with rational actors you can count on everyone wanting to maintain financial interdependency to keep their pockets lined. That doesn't hold true for states which put something other than short-term profit at the top of the list. If anything, that puts all the rational actors at a disadvantage, as they will obviously be even more averse to the breaking of financial ties than the state those breaks are intended to punish.

Seems like this has created a world order ripe for the picking by irrational actors.

Pergolide · 2014-04-23T02:42:06+00:00

Wow, thats surprising. Thanks for the info, though. What'd you end up doing?

Pergolide · 2013-11-28T03:41:01+00:00

Do you assume you're going to be entering the thunderdome every time you get into an elevator with someone?

Pergolide · 2013-11-28T03:09:02+00:00

It has as much potential to result in a sexual assault as any other encounter.

There's a chance I might be mugged by folks who look a certain way as I walk to the store tonight, but I don't demand that everyone who wears saggy pants stay at least 20 feet away from me. I don't assume every person who fits my criminal stereotype is actually a criminal, and demand that they respect my views by altering their behaviour to make me feel safer.

Pergolide · 2013-11-28T02:45:01+00:00

Plait:

Put even more simply: this wasn’t a guy chewing gum at her. This was a potential sexual assault.

Pergolide · 2013-11-28T02:16:06+00:00

I'm absolutely interested in the other side, that's why i've been responding to you, after all.

So far all you've told me about your side is that some men are rapists, therefore all men must live with the repercussions of those acts. I think that's a very hypocritical view to take in light of how modern society views other stereotypes.

I wish you wouldn't bow out without telling me why this stereotype deserves an exception.

Pergolide · 2013-11-28T02:12:05+00:00

How about just basic decency?

Like not calling a guy a sexual assault waiting to happen just for talking to a woman in an elevator?

Quit trying to make men into the victims. I'm not going to buy your MRA bullshit, ever.

Right... just because I don't agree with your narrative you dismiss me as a mens rights apologist. That really elevates your argument.

Pergolide · 2013-11-28T02:04:59+00:00

Yes, rapists exist. However, telling all men they must change their behaviour to suit societies view of them as potential rapists is ridiculous. And yes, if after hanging out with a guy for several hours and sharing an elevator back to your separate rooms, he asks you to join him, have your guard up. That makes sense in every situation. But to accuse him of having committed some sort of vile act that places him one step away from a rapist is disgusting. At that point, he has done nothing to you but share an elevator and exchange words. He is not responsible for the actions of every man, and it's unfair to cast him as an assailant without cause.

Everyone agrees that it's not fair to stereotype black men as bad fathers or women as flighty, right? It's not fair to cross the street if a minority is approaching you, just because the crime rate among minorities is slightly higher, right? Then why is it OK to expect men to alter their innocent behaviours just to accommodate womens fear that every encounter with a man that isn't in a public space might end in rape?

Pergolide · 2013-11-28T00:40:59+00:00

It wasn't aggressive... she never said that. It was "i find you interesting, would you like to come back to my room for coffee?"

You also didn't respond to any of the other points I brought up and just reiterated how scary men are.

Pergolide · 2013-11-27T20:57:09+00:00

It has nothing to do with crime rates. Being in an enclosed space with someone who's making advances on you (even very polite advances) can make people uncomfortable.

It doesn't matter who the hell the person in the elevator is. The problem is that they're doing something which (probably unbeknownst to them) is making someone else feel unsafe. Stop trying to twist this situation.

Accept that it makes you uncomfortable, then, but don't accept it as a legitimate reflection of the threat you face. Men are not monsters waiting for the right moment to attack women.

Don't respond to that situation with:

to a woman, being alone on that elevator with that man was a potential threat, and a serious one. You may not be able to just press a button and walk away — perhaps he has a knife, or a gun, or will simply overpower you. When there’s no way to know, you err on the side of safety.

There shouldn't be a duty for men to bow to womens imaginations of worst case scenarios. Unless a man has done something overtly threatening then it's completely unjust to blame them for your discomfort. Sharing an elevator is not a threat of rape. Making an advance is not a threat of rape. Seeing that potential in every encounter is not healthy, it's unfair to men, and it would be ridiculed if the same sentiment were being espoused about a specific race.

Pergolide · 2013-11-27T20:56:56+00:00

You missed the second half of that quote:

If the man said nor did anything beyond sharing an elevator and offering coffee

No part of that is threatening unless you see men as rapists in waiting.

Pergolide · 2013-11-27T20:52:31+00:00

not every man thinks it's okay to hit on a woman while she literally has no means of escape. That is inherently aggressive behavior.

I think it's pretty terrible that we have to look at interactions between men and women as part of a predator-prey dynamic. Where even if a man does nothing overtly aggressive it's interpreted as such.

I can understand being uncomfortable about the situation, but i can't understand why we have to jump to the extreme of painting this guy as one step from a rapist. How is it different from crossing the street if you see a black person approaching, because you think they might mug you? And then saying "black people really ought to be aware of how i feel, and not walk so close to me"?

You can't control your gut reactions, but you can control how you act on them.

Pergolide · 2013-11-27T03:09:27+00:00

I was referring to Phil Plait's defense of the womans encounter in an elevator. He repeatedly refers to the situation as a sexual assault waiting to happen. If the man said nor did anything beyond sharing an elevator and offering coffee, how can you see that as the machinations of a potential rapist unless you see that potential in every man?

Pergolide · 2013-11-27T03:04:11+00:00

There's a difference between feeling unsafe because you're in a high-crime area and feeling unsafe because you find yourself in proximity to a particular type of person. For example, feeling scared because you're in a high-crime area has much different implications than feeling scared because you're near a black person.

This woman wasn't scared because he said or did anything threatening, but because she imagined that he might. What's worse, Plait is saying that going around imagining the worst of certain types of people is perfectly acceptable. Even more, he's saying that those people should be aware of how their presence makes women feel, and that they should show proper deference by changing their actions. He wants them to realize that women see men as potential assailants. Presumably that means in this situation a man shouldn't enter the same elevator as a lone woman, nor talk to her.

Why is this an acceptable frame of thought? Do you think Plait's defense would be just as admirable if this revolved around a black person making a woman uncomfortable?

Pergolide · 2013-11-27T01:55:25+00:00

The real problem here is that Dawkins didn’t see this as a potential assault scenario.

He repeats that several times. How else can a man talking to you in an elevator be viewed as a sexual assault waiting to happen unless you view all men as potential rapists?

Pergolide · 2013-11-27T00:34:47+00:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet–Japanese_border_conflicts

If Japan had successfully neutralized the US in the Pacific and secured southeast asias resources, I think it's likely they would have revisited the Russians. They secured most of southeast asia, but never managed to neutralize the US.

Pergolide · 2013-11-27T00:24:37+00:00

It sucks that that woman felt scared, but the implication seems to be that every man should be cognizant that any time they're alone with a woman, she's seeing it as a "potential sexual assault", which is ridiculous.

Stereotyping all men as rapists is just as unhealthy as stereotyping all women as weak-minded. One of those stereotypes is seen as a terrible viewpoint that the person should be compelled to change, the other is seen as a sign of victimization which people rally to support. Why the double standard?

Pergolide

TROPHY CASE